Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (SAU Homecoming)

          There is an ancient and beautiful Latin saying in the Church that goes like this: lex orandi, lex credendi.  It simply means: the rule of prayer is the rule of belief.  In other words, we pray what we believe.  And so, we can look at any of the liturgical prayers of the Church and find in them a succinct and accurate expression of our faith.  Every prayer in the Church’s liturgy is like a “mini Creed.” 

          The saying can be reversed too:  lex credendi, lex orandi.  Not only do we pray what we believe, but we believe what we pray.  The Church’s prayer not only reflects or gives expression to our beliefs, but actually reminds us of those beliefs.  And as we pray them, we reaffirm our faith.

          There is one other very important piece to this saying that is often added, and it is the lex vivendi, that is, the rule of life.  We pray what we believe, we believe what we pray, and we live what we pray and believe.  And so, for example, it is not enough that we say we believe in the dignity of every human person, as made in the image and likeness of God, or even that we pray for our fellow human beings.  We must also live in a way that reflects this.  We must treat our fellow human beings with the dignity that is theirs.  Anybody can say that they believe in the dignity of the human person, and maybe even vocalize a lovely prayer for their fellow human beings, but, as they say, “the proof is in the pudding.”   The true measure of our Christian faith is how we live and act based on our “Yes” to God.

          This, I think, is the point of Jesus’ parable of the two sons in the Gospel today.  When these two sons are asked by their father to go and work in the vineyard, the first son says, “I will not,” but later thinks better of it and goes to do his father’s bidding.  The second son says, “Yes, sir, [I will go],” but then does not actually do so.  Jesus asks, “Which of the two did his father’s will?”  The first son, of course, despite his initial refusal.  If we had to pick who to imitate between these two sons, we would want to pick the first son, who actually did his father’s will.  It is to people such as this (even tax collectors and prostitutes, Jesus says) that God will bestow the kingdom, rather than to those who merely said, “I will serve,” but then failed to act on their promise. 

Of course, the best option isn’t even laid out here by Jesus.  But the best thing would be to both say “Yes” and mean it; to say “Yes” and follow through.  Without even mentioning it, Jesus presents Himself (by his actions) as the prime example of this, of someone who accepted His mission and saw it to through to the very end.  In a sense, He is the “third son” in this parable.  Mary, the mother of Jesus and our mother, is undoubtedly the next best example of someone who committed her whole self to the service of the Lord and fulfilled this in her life: “Be it done to me according to your word.”  Among the other saints we find even more examples.  To be sure, there were saints who said “No” at first in various ways, or who were delayed in their “Yes,” but who eventually did say “Yes,” and then carried out God’s will in their lives.  I think here of our very own Saint Ambrose of Milan, who wasn’t even baptized when he was elected bishop by popular acclaim.  He could have offered a hollow “Yes” and just “jumped through necessary hoops” and undergone the necessary ceremonies to appease the people (or worse yet, to seek power for himself), but he obviously opened himself to the grace of the sacraments and meant what he promised in those ceremonies, as he proved to be an outstanding shepherd, teacher and defender of the faith.    

But there are also many saints who said “Yes” from a very early age and continued to live in a way consistent with that “Yes.” The saint whose feast day we would celebrate today, were it not superseded by the Sunday, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, comes to mind.  By age 12 she had already cultivated a profound relationship with the Lord.  She entered the convent at age 15 and died at age 24, but not before teaching us her “little way” of doing small things with great love, and leaving us with her work, The Story of a Soul, for which Pope John Paul II named her a “Doctor of the Church,” to stand alongside Saint Ambrose, among others. One thing we can be sure of: there are no saints who said “Yes” to God with their lips, but “No” with their lives.

The necessity of this correspondence between faith and action, between words and deeds, is, in fact, a recurring theme in Matthew’s Gospel.  In Chapter 5 Jesus says, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.”  In Chapter 7 He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven,” and a few verses later, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like the wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.”  In Chapter 12 Jesus asks, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”  And then stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He says, “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father, is my brother, and sister, and mother.”  Not to mention the fact that throughout the Gospel Jesus is calling out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scholars of the law who profess to be men of strict religious observance, and yet turn a blind eye to their neighbor in distress and forget the supreme law of charity, of love.

We pray what we believe, we believe what we pray, and we live what we pray and believe.  This is the challenge and the call that is before us as disciples of Jesus Christ.  And let’s face it, we do this very imperfectly.  We’re better at this on some days and worse on others.  The beauty of the parables of Jesus is that we can always see ourselves in more than one of the characters.  And so, in this parable of the two sons, we know that many times we have been that second son, who with eagerness and self-assurance said “Yes,” but then failed to live up to his promises.  But we have also been the first son, who either out of laziness or out of stubbornness said “No” to God at first, but then had a change of heart and entered the vineyard.  And we are always striving to be more like Christ, that “third son,” who both said “Yes” and lived it.  We need each other; we need the community of the Church to do this more consistently in our lives.  And so, it is good that frequently we come home, here in the Eucharist to gather as a family, as daughters and sons of God to encourage one another in this endeavor and to receive the grace and strength to carry it out.

As we celebrate Homecoming, let’s not just come home to this place, on this one weekend.  Let’s come home to a lively faith, a lived faith.  You are here today because this university holds a special place in your heart; and you are here in this chapel, I’m guessing, because this was a spiritually significant stop along your journey.  Maybe something sparked in you many years ago, or a spark that was already within you was fanned into flame here.  But the truth is, this is not something that you left here; it is something you carry with you.  In this sense, Saint Ambrose University, and all it represents for you is always with you.  You are always home.

My brothers and sisters, and my fellow Ambrosians, let us recommit ourselves today to pray what we believe, believe what we pray and live what we pray and believe, and so enter with the saints into the kingdom that God has prepared for us.